Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Short Tidbits (On reason, and Empiricism)

What Folly?

The problem with some believers when confronting atheism is that they rely too much to misconceptions. Surely, if you dismantle a misconception you are not accomplishing anything. Now here is a good example:

You often hear atheists say that that they are the guardian of reason; this is true as far as it goes. But this illusion of being a guardian comes from the misconception that reason is confined only on empirical evidence. Human truth, such as beauty, joy, romanticism, love etc. are all evident in each of us and yet intangible. But for the atheist, intangibility is tantamount to inexistence ergo unreason. The atheist takes empirical truth and treat it as human truth, for he has no imagination. They see the dinosaur turning into a bird or the seed turning into a plant and yet they cannot see how extraordinary this is, they are too close to see the big picture. As a great man once said “If you don’t think it's extraordinary for a pumpkin to become pumpkin then you hadn’t even began philosophy”. For the philosophy of the atheist is narrow at best, they demonstrate empirical nature and do not find God, The theist finds God and demonstrate nature. For to look for God in nature is incomplete, to find God in our universe is to also take into account human truths. They assert that matter only exists and yet they cannot imagine a universe such as theirs, for if they did, they wouldn’t be atheists.

Ok…so the first thing we notice here is that the author thinks that atheist's claims to be “guardian of reason.” No, we don’t guard reason, we just use it better.

Maybe the best thing we have to do here is to define what reason is and how atheists use it.

I think the author of this Christian article defined reason, as a rational motive in believing in the existence or non-existence of something. Further reading suggests that the author thinks that the word reason is synonymous with the word truth, is it?

All of us use reason, that is because it justifies our belief. We reason, because we think. Ancient people believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth and to prove this, they will reason out that the Sun always rise to the East and set in the West. Most Christians still believe that planet Earth is flat, that it is just 6,000 years old and their reason is that the Bible (which is the inerrant word of God) said so. That is reasoning, but is it true?

Being Reasonable or Being Rational?

Not all reason is good reasoning. Hey, anyone can draw, right? However, an artist is very different compared to an ordinary Joe. That is the same with reasoning. Everyone can reason out, but it takes more than that to arrive at an objective truth - that includes the disciplines of science and logic, as well as critical thinking.

Faith is also reasoning. Well, some atheists do separate reason from faith, but based on our working definition of the word “reason,” faith can also serve as a cause to believe in the existence of something intangible. However, just because faith is also a kind of reason does not mean that it is proven true.

We use reason to justify our belief system, yet it does not constitute a truth-value. That is where rationality sets-in. Faith-based reasoning is motivated by emotion while rationality is more objective. Hmmmm…Christians believed that God exist because…well because He might strike them dead or cursed them to go to Hell if they don’t or because they love Jesus, the Roman Catholic Church, the communion of the Saint and so on. Yet atheists like me does not believe that God exists because the probability of its existence is improbable. We get our conclusion using science (not too much in philosophy, though in philosophy, even Humpty-Dumpty can exist), by dealing with data and logical arguments, not because of fear or love or hate…whatever.

Now the author thinks that joy, love, beauty, and romanticism as human truth, yet it cannot explain the existence of something intangible. Joy, love, beauty, and romanticism are examples of abstract human thought, and these are too subjective to give a good example of something as true. Human emotions are not used in critical thinking. The existences of a god are epistemological and metaphysical concerns not an emotional one.

Empiricism Do Not Enter!

Why this allergic reaction to the word “empirical?”

Christians are always shouting againts this word every time they see it approaching their arguments. What is wrong with empirical proofs? The problem here is that when we talk about something empirical, we are talking about something that we can observe. Remember, the foundation of their God belief relies on something that cannot be observed, that’s faith. Therefore, they have to do something for this shortfall.

Ideas are not tangible, so does imaginations. I can always imagine a perfect island (like Gaulino) or a perfect universe. However, that's it, it is just an imagination- a figment of an over-active mind. That is why empiricism is barred in Christian apology – it will be hard for them to justify the existence of an invisible, supernatural, disembodied entity in the scope of empirical evidence. They have to rely on “out of this world proof” or emotional, subjective feeling to defend God’s existence. That's why they need faith, to justify the existence of the unseen and the unproven. Come on, if God is real, why need the justification of faith? I do not see air, or atoms, or black holes and dark matter yet I do not need faith to justify its existence. I do not see dinosaur turning to birds or seeds turning into pumpkins, yet scientific evidence proves it. Now, if I will believe that a pumpkin will turn into a glass carriage, now that requires faith.